


Hollywood

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester's dream diary, Demon Dean Winchester, Episode: s02e09 Croatoan, Gen, Hell Trauma, Post-Episode: s09e23 Do You Believe In Miracles?, Post-Hell, Season/Series 04, because i don't like to hollywood, but not really, fucking recaps, haha I'm kidding, hyperextended Hell!fic, i never hollywood it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 11:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2268864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Abaddon doesn't know is that Hell actually knows Dean pretty well; and they certainly remember him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hollywood

**Author's Note:**

> 2x09 "Croatoan"/ S4 / S9 / post-9x23 "Do You Believe in Miracles?"

Toward the end, he'd begun to dream things that never happened. 

It was a step up from dreaming the things that had--for a long time, it had been Hell on all screens, at all hours. Sometimes there'd be a B flick, and he'd dream of catfish (cajun spices transmitted orally--subliminally--there are no kitchens in Purgatory). He'd dream of alien invasion. Midgets. But Hell was the money-maker, the summer blockbuster that never quite went out of style. 

Cult followings will do that.

Luckily Sam had never quite shaken his teenage hipster vibe; by grace of God (because it wasn't Lucifer who'd prophesied, was it; it had been God) he'd shelved the topic--moved on to edgier, more drastic things. 

They didn't talk about Hell after that first year; hadn't ever _during_ it, not really. 

But Hell talked plenty.

When Dean drunk dreamed, or drug dreamed, he'd wake up rigid and empty and his body wouldn't hesitate to tell him what he'd missed. Fucking recaps.

Then he'd turn to Sam I'm-fucking-Ruby-fuck-you Winchester and wonder if this was the year he'd have to kill his brother because he'd failed, so long ago, to save him. Early enough in the morning, Dean probably could have.

If he hadn't woken up to an empty room, with Sam gone and fucking Ruby--fuck you!--so damn often, he probably would have. He'd been spared the task not by self-control, but lack of opportunity. He's had plenty of time to get clear on that, and that's what it boils down to.

That's kind of shitty.

"You're human," Castiel said once, early on. He'd meant, _you're lucky. You're human, you lucky bastard, and you can dream. You're not what you would have been, if I hadn't scruffed you and pulled you fucking up. You're lucky you can dream at all, because demon's don't. So throw your nightmares a fucking move-in party, because at least it means that you're still here. Be grateful._

Roughly translated, anyway. It took Dean a while to realize that angelspeak apparently carried a lot more meaning by inflection than English could reliably bear. He didn't have a clue what Cas really meant when he said things, or didn't say them. But this much was true: humanity was built to dream. Demons weren't.

Dean dreamed about Hell. And when he lucked into not remembering his mental graveyard shift, it was always easy to fill in the blanks. His mind, ever dutiful, did not resist that kind of puzzle. It was not a difficult puzzle.

But when Dean killed Abaddon, Hellwood Motion Pictures got a sequel: and for the first time in a long time, Dean dreamed a what-if.

"I'm the Queen of Hell," said Abaddon, in his new dream. She'd smelled of gun oil and anise, and beneath that watered down roses--the smell of a young girl trying to make her perfume last. In real life, Dean's not sure she smelled like anything. Sulfur, maybe, but at that point what hadn't?

I'm the Queen of Hell, and Hell is mine, she'd said. "They're not scared of you. They don't know you," she'd said.

They don't bow to _you._

"Oh, they did," Dean answered. 

It was the first real thing he'd ever said about Hell. Sure, he'd copped to torture and then some, but given the last few years up top, that wasn't so special anymore. Torture ain't a Hell thing. 

In his dream, Dean killed Abaddon not in a penthouse, but on an anonymous strip of park. Off the highway--it was fall and the leaves were dropping. The grass was still green, there was a knobby fence overlooking a fat blue river. 

 

(after 5  
time to clock out.   
too late in the day   
for fratricide)

 

Abaddon was a smart bitch, but all that meant was she was blind to other people's dumb fucking decisions.

Hell knew Dean plenty. They'd known him for years. And oh, "They do bow."

You know--the Winchester conation to coronation and all that. 

Then he'd killed her.

In his dream, Dean's eyes slicked black. He dreamed it again and again and again, until one day it wasn't a dream.

 

Now, Dean dreams about dreaming.


End file.
